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President Muhammadu Buhari, yesterday, signed Coronavirus (COVID-19) Health Protection Regulations 2021 as part of efforts to boost the COVID-19 response in the country.
The introduction of the Regulations is a welcome development, according to Nigerian Medical Association and other stakeholders in the health sector.
Buhari said the regulations, which would take immediate effect, were given urgent consideration to safeguard the health and ensure the well-being of Nigerians, especially in the face of rising COVID-19 cases in the country.
The guidelines state that any person that contravened provisions of the regulations commits, upon conviction, risked a fine or a term of six months imprisonment or both in accordance with Section 5 of the Quarantine Act.
The President directed the Nigeria Police Force, Nigeria Security and Civil Defence Corps, Federal Road Safety Corps, Nigeria Immigration Service, Federal Airport Authority of Nigeria, and other relevant local government, state and Federal governments’ agencies to enforce the regulations, warning that any officer that failed, neglected, or refused to enforce the provisions of the regulations would be subjected to disciplinary actions.
“Any person who, without reasonable cause, contravenes a direction given under Parts 1 and 2 of these regulations commits an offence. Any person who, without reasonable cause, obstructs an authorised official from enforcement of these regulations commits an offence,” the document states.
According the regulations, persons confirmed positive for COVID-19 by an NCDC accredited laboratory, may not refuse isolation and or admission to a designated health establishment for management of the disease.
The regulations also state that physical distance of no less two metres shall be maintained at all gatherings between persons and no gathering of more than 50 persons shall hold in an enclosed space, except for religious purposes, in which case the gathering shall not exceed 50 per cent capacity of the space.
It also stipulates that all persons in public gatherings, whether in enclosed or open spaces, shall adhere to the provisions of the regulations, which may be varied by guidelines and protocols as may be issued, from time to time, by the Presidential Task Force (PTF) on COVID-19 on the recommendation of the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control (NCDC).

After three weeks of confirming a minimum of 1,000 new COVID-19 infections daily, Nigeria’s single-day count dropped slightly on Sunday with 964 fresh cases recorded in 18 states and the federal capital territory (FCT).

The last time the daily count dropped below 1,000 was on January 3, when 917 new infections were confirmed positive for the virus.
Within the three-week period — between January 3 and January 24 — the number of confirmed infections has risen from 90,080 to 121,566, just as the fatality toll has moved from 1,311 to 1,504.
Nigeria also recorded its highest single-day count within the same 21-day period – 2,314 positive samples were confirmed in 23 states and the FCT on January 22.
However, the number of recoveries has also improved significantly within the same period, rising from 75,044 to 97,228.
According to the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control (NCDC), the January 24 update saw Lagos topping the list with 360 cases, followed by FCT with 88, and Ogun with 73 infections.
Two persons were confirmed to have died of coronavirus complications on Saturday, while 1,327 patients were discharged, which included 774 community recoveries in Lagos.
While Nigeria has now exceeded two million on its number of samples tested across the country, 23,568 are currently active cases.
Lagos (8,851), FCT (4,706), and Nasarawa (1,158) account for the highest number of active cases in the country.

The decrease in infection cases and the increase in the number of cured people are a good thing, but whether we can still relax our vigilance, we still have to take protective measures and maintain social distance.

One of the sectors hampered since the COVID-19 pandemic started in December 2019 is education and to a large extent, children have been affected especially as they have been forced to stay at home for more than nine months.

In the process, lots of measures were put in place including virtual learning. Some of the state governments used the opportunity to explore various avenues in digital learning and it paid off, despite hitches here and there. Now that the Federal Government of Nigeria has directed that both public and private schools open for the academic session on January 18, 2021, so that children can continue their normal education; the big question is, should the children continue to stay at home? Is there a way to manage the pandemic whilst the children resume their normal education? Can school teachers and counsellors give their best in ensuring the safety of the children in school? Will the COVID-19 protocols be strictly adhered to by all stakeholders? Who will take the responsibility should anything go wrong, Government, Parents, or School administrators?

With COVID-19 deaths in the USA rapidly approaching 400,000 and new variants of the virus spreading, nothing is more important than quickly inoculating vulnerable Americans. But the vaccine rollout is being hamstrung by unnecessary bureaucracy and complexity.
Websites for inoculation enrollment have crashed. Phone calls have gone unanswered. Senior citizens camped out all night in Florida for limited first come, first shots. In New York, they waded through 51-step online application forms only to have no one get back to them. In some cases, prized vaccine doses have been thrown out by medical providers who couldn't find the precisely correct recipients under rigid applicability tiers fashioned by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Some confusion is inevitable, especially when demand exceeds supply. According to CDC data, however, of the 31.2 million doses distributed as of Friday morning, only 12.3 million had been administered. President-elect Joe Biden last week called his predecessor's efforts "a dismal failure" and promised 100 million vaccinations in his first 100 days.

South Africa’s new COVID-19 wave fuelled by a new variant of the virus is putting pressure on the country’s healthcare system, leaving policymakers concerned about the government’s failure to secure a vaccine.
Africa is set to get the first COVID-19 vaccine doses in March from the COVID-19 Vaccines Global Access (COVAX) Facility, a global effort aimed at speeding up the development, manufacture and equitable distribution of new vaccines, according to Matshidiso Moeti, World Health Organization (WHO) regional director for Africa.
According to a report from the WHO published this week (12 January), South Africa recorded the Africa region’s highest number of new cases last week, with the 125,287 new cases translating to 211.2 new cases per 100,000 population.
Nigeria’s 8,315 new cases or four cases per 100,000 and Zimbabwe’s 6,008 new cases or 40.4 new cases per 100 000 also represent steeper increases since November, the report adds.
“There has been an indication that our variant is quite different from the one identified in the United Kingdom. However, both variants seem to be highly transmissible,” said Zweli Mkhize, South Africa’s minister for health, at a virtual meeting held last week (6 January) with the country’s portfolio committee on health.
The new variant called 501Y.V2, which emerged in South Africa’s metropolitan area, Nelson Mandela Bay on the coast of the Eastern Cape Province, has eight defining changes in the COVID-19 virus spike protein, according to a paper yet to be accepted for publication.
“From preliminary and ongoing investigations in South Africa, it is possible that the 501Y.V2 variant is more transmissible than variants circulating in South Africa previously. Moreover, while this new variant does not appear to cause more severe illness, the observed rapid increases in case numbers has placed health systems under pressure,” the WHO report adds.
Mkhize says that more studies are being conducted by South African researchers and international partners on the impact of the new variant, its potential to cause severe forms of the disease and its responsiveness to COVID-19 vaccines.
“It leaves us with one reality, and that is to deal with this issue, the only major source of protection is going to come from a vaccination programme,” he adds.
But some policymakers are concerned about the country’s readiness for distributing COVID-19 vaccines.
“Over 33 countries in the world have already secured vaccines for their citizens, and South Africa being among the top 15 countries with the most infections, has not secured [COVID-19] vaccines,” said Naledi Chirwa, a member of the National Assembly of South Africa and a member of the portfolio committee on health, during the virtual meeting.
Chirwa added that the situation could jeopardise South Africa’s plan to begin the country’s COVID-19 vaccination programme next month.
But as South Africa and other African countries seek to secure COVID-19 vaccines, scientists are concerned about the challenges of detecting new strains of the virus. As at now, no African country has secured a vaccine.
Onikepe Folarin, an associate professor in the department of biological sciences at Redeemer’s University, Nigeria, tells SciDev.Net: “A challenge is the procurement of reagents and supplies for the characterisation of the new variant through genome sequencing using the next generation sequencing technique.
“Although the facilities exist in our laboratory, procurement of the reagents into the country has been very challenging as Africa does not produce any of these reagents and supplies.”
According to Folarin, who is also the deputy director of the African Centre of Excellence for Genomics of Infectious Diseases at the Redeemer’s University, the emergence of the new variants of the COVID 19 virus is not new and abnormal considering the general characteristics of viruses.
“All hands need to be on deck to be able to track them and characterise them as early as possible to enhance management and control,” says Folarin. “Policymakers should endeavour to fund research within the region that will enable better understanding of the virus and behaviour in the region and also to develop indigenous vaccines.”

House members may have been exposed to Covid-19 when they went into hiding during the riots at the U.S. Capitol, Congress' attending physician wrote in a letter to members and staffers Sunday.
Meanwhile, experts are warning that the much-criticized rollout of the vaccine has laid the groundwork for a scenario in which the rich and the politically connected use their money and power to cut in line and get vaccinated before everyone else.

The health system and health workers in Nigeria are under incredible strain, as a more and more very ill patients are now presenting themselves to the hospitals.
Dr Adedamola Dada, the Medical Director, Federal Medical Centre (FMC) Ebute Meta, Lagos, made the assertion in Lagos on Wednesday,.
He spoke while commenting on the raging second wave of COVID- 19 pandemic in the country.
According to him, we very urgently need to help the health workers cope better by reducing the number of infections and therefore patients they see.
“We need to help the system. This will only happen when we all obey the COVID guidelines and collectively work to reduce the number of infections.
“The vaccines will soon be here and the government is working hard to bring those vaccines into our country as soon as possible.
“However,  it’s only those who are alive that would benefit from it. Please, obey the COVID guidelines and stay alive. The country need you, and your family also need you,” Dada said in a statement.
He said we could begin to turn the tide “in spite of the very tough times we face currently in the country with this condition, only if we all start following the guidelines today.

The United States and India have engaged in “unprecedented levels of cooperation to combat the coronavirus pandemic,” U.S. Under Secretary of State Stephen Biegun said October 12.
Biegun’s comment came during a trip to India, where he praised the deepening U.S.-India relationship and the shared values and goals of the world’s largest democracies.
Biegun pointed to this strengthening relationship as leading directly to “cooperation on developing and producing therapeutics and vaccines” to fight COVID-19.
The collaboration to develop countermeasures against COVID-19 builds on more than three decades of U.S.-India cooperation in science and technology.
One such partnership includes the 33-year-old Indo-U.S. Vaccine Action Program (VAP), a bilateral program between the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH) and India’s Department of Biotechnology and the Indian Council of Medical Research.
Since its inception in 1987, VAP has supported the development, testing and distribution of vaccines by building research capacity, training scientists and facilitating partnerships across the public and private sectors in India and the United States. Ongoing VAP activities include vaccine research focused on tuberculosis, dengue, chikungunya, respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) and SARS-CoV-2, the virus responsible for COVID-19, as well as research on other emerging pathogens.
Indian institutions and drug manufacturers and producers have partnered with U.S. universities, charities and pharmaceutical companies to test and study potential COVID-19 vaccines.
The successful U.S.-India collaboration on vaccines and therapeutics has global implications since India is one of the largest suppliers of affordable drugs in the world.
Many of India’s largest vaccine manufacturers, including the Serum Institute of India (SII) in Pune and Biological-E and Bharat Biotech in Hyderabad, are playing a vital role in the global fight against COVID-19.
For example, SII is working to develop a COVID-19 vaccine with U.S. biotech firm Codagenix and is working with GAVI, the Vaccine Alliance and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to produce 200 million doses of COVID-19 vaccines for low- and middle-income countries.
SII is also manufacturing vaccines developed by U.S.-based Novavax and U.K.-based AstraZeneca, both part of Operation Warp Speed and recipients of funding and support from the U.S. government.
Operation Warp Speed, initiated by the White House Task Force, coordinated a public-private partnership to develop, manufacture and distribute safe and effective vaccines, therapeutics and diagnostics in historically record times.
Additionally, the U.S. government announced in September 2020 that Gilead, the U.S. inventor of remdesivir, which is used to treat COVID-19, had granted licenses to several Indian companies to produce a generic version of the drug for “127 low- and middle-income countries.”
“We know that our continued close cooperation with India will be an important part of the global recovery from the pandemic,” a State Department spokesperson said.

It is in the afternoon on the last day of 2020 and the sun is scorching inside the bustling Ogbete market in the heart of Enugu city. Chinenye Chukwu is haggling over the prices of her banana fruit with four customers who are standing around her. She is not wearing a mask. She does not even have one inside her bag. None of her customers have masks either. But Chukwu does not care.
She thinks the stories about the outbreak of the COVID-19, the fact that it has resulted in the loss of nearly 1.9 million lives globally, are untrue.
“I can’t wear that mask. I don’t have COVID-19. It is meant for those who have it, if it really exists. But I don’t think it does,” she told me, while attending to her customers.
Like Chukwu, several owners of small businesses inside the ever-bustling Enugu market, including dealers in second-hand clothing, phone accessories, and foodstuffs, are attending to unmasked customers.
On Tuesday, the director-general of the NCDC, Chikwe Ihekweazu, warned that January will be tough for the country because of the spike in COVID-19 infections.
In the past weeks, Nigeria has recorded a spike in the number of infections, a situation Ihekweazu says the country’s health system is struggling to cope with.
He told members of the Presidential Task Force that the situation is disheartening because safety protocol have not been heeded by Nigerians. “We just faced the worst week since we started responding to this outbreak. We had more cases in Nigeria last week than in any other previous week since the beginning of the outbreak.”
He expressed concerns that pictures and videos from across the country paint a very disheartening situation and it appears that messages and appeals over the last few months and weeks have been ignored.
Although the deadly coronavirus is spreading at an alarming speed, many Nigerians do not consider COVID-19 a public health emergency. They move on the streets without masks. Social distancing has completely been forgotten. Many homes have thrown away the culture of maintaining personal hygiene.
Away from the celebrations that accompanied Christmas, friends gathered for drinks, and several marriage ceremonies were observed without strict compliance to social distancing guidelines.
In response to this, Chikwe Ihekweazu says “we will now have to brace ourselves for the consequences of the activities that we have decided to carry out in December.”
Cyril Ramaphosa, South Africa’s president, has announced a new ban on alcohol sales, while also insisting that mask-wearing will be mandatory in public.
On Sunday, the country’s total coronavirus infections have surpassed one million, days after a new faster-spreading variant was confirmed to be present in the country. With a total of over 1,004,413 cases reported towards the end of 2020, and a death rate standing at nearly 27,000, South Africa remains the worst-hit country in Africa. Morocco occupies the second place spot with 432,079 cases and 7,240 deaths, followed by Egypt with 131,315 cases and 7,352 fatalities.
In a televised speech on Monday, Ramaphosa said “unless we act now and unless we act decisively, the number of new infections will far exceed what we experienced during the first wave and thousands of more people will lose their lives.”
He pointed the finger at “super-spreader” social events and an “extreme lack of vigilance over the holiday period,” insisting that his government had let down its guard and is now paying the price.
The country’s health minister, Zwelini Mkhize, said that a severe variant of the coronavirus has been detected in South Africa, which explains the rapid spread of a second wave that affects younger people. Known as 501.V2 variant, it was said to have been identified by South African researchers and details have been sent to the World Health Organization.
With the increasing rate of infections in Nigeria, like other African nations, the government might be forced to go into another painful lockdown.

As the US wraps up its third week of vaccinations, Dr. Anthony Fauci made a major statement Friday about how they will proceed.
The US will continue giving two doses of the current coronavirus vaccines weeks apart, and will not follow the UK's decision to potentially delay second doses, Fauci told CNN senior medical correspondent Elizabeth Cohen.
"I would not be in favor of that," Fauci said when asked about the UK's new dosing plan. "We're going to keep doing what we're doing."
So far, the coronavirus vaccines approved in the US require two doses, taken three to four weeks apart.
On Wednesday, the British government announced that the UK would prioritize giving the first dose of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine "to those in the most high-risk group" and allow the second dose to be given up to 12 weeks later.
The UK adopted that strategy to give as many people as possible the first dose as quickly as possible. Even the first shot, UK medical officers have argued, would afford some amount of protection.
Asked on Thursday by NBC's "Today" show if the US should adopt the UK's plan, Fauci had answered, "That's under consideration."
But he told CNN Friday that this comment had been misinterpreted.
Pfizer and Moderna, the makers of the two vaccines given emergency use authorization in the US, studied the effectiveness of two doses a few weeks apart, not a few months apart, noted Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.
"The fact is we want to stick with what the science tells us, and the data that we have for both (vaccines) indicate you give a prime, followed by a boost in 21 days with Pfizer and 28 days with Moderna. And right now, that's the way we're going with it, and that's the decision that is made," he said Friday.
"We make decisions based on data. We don't have any data of giving a single dose and waiting for more than the normal period of time" to give the second dose, he added.
When Fauci told NBC that following the UK's example was "under consideration," he meant that some people -- not US health authorities -- were talking about it, he told CNN Friday.
"It was somewhat of a misinterpretation. I think some -- not everybody -- but people misinterpreted when I said it's under consideration [as] like we're going to change. We're not," he said.
People who were vaccinated with the Pfizer vaccine on December 14 are due soon to take their second shots.

JOHANNESBURG- The government in Nigeria’s Lagos state has raised the alarm over sales of fake Covid-19 test results, Vanguard newspaper reported.
It said the government had warned that processes were being put in place to clamp down on both buyers and sellers.
"It has come to our attention that a number of people are patronising individuals that sell fake Covid-19 results,“ Lagos commissioner for health Professor Akin Abayomi told the media on Monday.
“We are currently putting in processes to identify both buyers and sellers and we will not hesitate to prosecute either to the full extent of the law.”
Abayomi also threatened to deactivate the passports of travellers refusing to comply with Covid-19 testing protocols.
"Efforts are being made through our logistics arm to reach this group of people. These attempts have been met with challenges as several people used fake contact information while registering on the testing portal,“ he said.
For the sake and safety of the general public, such people should come for testing immediately, Abayomi added.
Last week, President Muhammadu Buhari said it was the time to intensify collective efforts at combating the spread of the virus.
"As the festive season approaches, I urge all Nigerians to remain vigilant and stay safe. Non-essential trips and large social gatherings should be avoided or shelved completely," Buhari said via Twitter.
Lagos, which is the epicentre of the pandemic in the West African country, has recorded over 28,700 cases and 236 fatalities.
In its latest update, the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control reported 397 new cases of Covid-19 nation-wide, bringing the national tally to 84,811 cases to date. Of these, 71,357 people have recovered but 1,264 have died.

Nigerian health authorities have confirmed one more COVID-19-related death and 829 new infections in the country.
According to a latest update by Nigeria Centre for Disease Control, the total number of cases in the country reached 83,576, including 1,247 deaths and 70,495 recoveries.
With over 28,400 infections, commercial capital Lagos remains Nigeria’s worst-hit city.
It is followed by the Federal Capital Territory, which includes the capital Abuja, with more than 11,000 cases, and the northwestern Kaduna State, where over 4,800 cases have been confirmed to date.

The federal government is close to delivering 20 million doses of COVID-19 vaccine during the month of December, as promised, but states are taking longer than expected to get those doses into people's arms, officials admitted Wednesday.
About 15.5 million doses will be delivered by the end of the year, with the remaining 5 million arriving between Jan. 4-6, said Gen. Gus Perna, who co-leads Operation Warp Speed, the federal effort to develop and distribute COVID-19 vaccines, treatments and tests.
But only about 1 million of the 9 million doses distributed so far have been reported administered, his co-lead Moncef Slaoui confirmed during a news conference.
The death rate from COVID-19 in the U.S. reached an all-time high in the week ending Tuesday, and an American is dying of the virus every 32 seconds.
Reporting of the shots can take 3-4 days, Slaoui said, so the vaccination figures are probably better than they appear – but there's still a substantial lag.
Where's the COVID-19 vaccine? Who's been vaccinated? Here's how we'll know.
"Exactly how fast the ramp-up of immunizations – shots in arms – is happening is slower than we thought it would be," Slaoui said.
He offered federal help to states to accelerate that process. "It's important that the states are able to increase the cadence of immunization, but it's also important that they do it at a pace where they are in control, that no mistakes are made and no accidents are happening," he said. "That's super important."
The lag is likely caused by a variety of factors, including the logistical challenge of starting a new program, the difficulties of administering these vaccines, and the fact that many hospitals are nearly overwhelmed with COVID-19 patients right now.
"I don't think the rollout went as well as many of us would have hoped, said Dr. Daniel Griffin, an infectious disease specialist at ProHEALTH Care in New York.
At first, the shots were not where the workers needed them to be, he said. The first week the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine was available, he was offered a shot at 7:30 a.m. at a hospital 45 minutes from where he works. Weekends were not an option.
This week, the arrival of the second vaccine, made by Moderna, has made a difference, he said. Griffin, who treated 30 COVID-19 patients on Wednesday, was able to get his first of the two-dose vaccine the same day.
Griffin said he imagined the vaccinations would be like the flu shot, where someone would walk over to him while he was seeing patients, he'd roll up his sleeve and get the shot. But with these vaccines, the person vaccinated has to wait around for 15 minutes to make sure they're not having a bad reaction.

ABUJA (Reuters) – Nigeria is advising its sub-regions to limit public gatherings, close bars and night clubs over the next five weeks amid a spike in new COVID-19 cases, a government coronavirus task force said on Monday.
Africa’s most populous nation could be on the verge of a second wave of the novel coronavirus with the number of confirmed cases rising within communities over the last few weeks.
Lagos, Nigeria’s commercial capital, Abuja and northern state of Kaduna have emerged as new epicenters with over 70% of confirmed cases, said Boss Mustapha, chairman of the presidential task force for COVID-19, who is the country’s most senior civil servant.
The proportion of positive tests for the virus has increased since the second week of December, linking the spread to large gatherings and poor compliance with face mask, he added.
The statement advised states to limit meeting capacity of churches and mosques while pubs and event centers should be closed. The regions should enforce face mask use in public.
Nigeria, runs a federal system of government and local governments have the legal structure and enforcement to manage the pandemic within their jurisdictions, the statement said.
Lagos has ordered schools to shut indefinitely and banned concerts, carnivals and street parties and asked certain civil servants to work from home amid a spike in new COVID-19 cases.
The statement said the government was discussing restricting international travels to countries where a new strain of the coronavirus had been discovered.

Confirmed coronavirus infections and virus-related deaths are soaring in California, the nation's most populous state, setting new records as hospitals struggle to keep up with the onslaught of cases.
It has prompted the state to activate its "mass fatality" program, which coordinates mutual aid across several governmental agencies.
On Thursday, California reported 52,281 new daily confirmed coronavirus cases and 379 new virus-related deaths, according to state data. This brings the state's total number of cases to more than 1.7 million, with 21,860 deaths since the pandemic began.
The impact on hospitals is particularly grave in Southern California, where no intensive care unit beds are available.
According to The Los Angeles Times, which is compiling its own coronavirus tally for the state, the number of Californians hospitalized due to the disease has broken records for 18 consecutive days.
The number of people in ICUs because of COVID-19 continues to set records as well, the newspaper said, with 14 straight days of increases.
Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti said Thursday that his 9-year-old daughter has tested positive and is "doing fine." Because of his daughter's test result, he said, he and his wife, who have tested negative, will quarantine.
On Tuesday, Gov. Gavin Newsom struck an optimistic tone after the first tranche of Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccines began arriving in the state.
The governor said that in addition to the 327,600 doses that arrived this week, Pfizer will distribute another 393,900 doses next week.
"I've said often there is light at the tunnel, but we're still in the tunnel," Newsom said, adding that the state is in the midst of the most challenging surge since the beginning of the pandemic.
"We will come out of it stronger than ever. I just want to come out of it healthier than ever. I want you to be there to experience the resurgence, this recovery, California's comeback," he said.

DES MOINES – Tyson Foods said Wednesday it's firing seven employees at its Waterloo pork processing plant following an investigation into allegations that managers and supervisors made bets on the number of workers who would be sickened by the coronavirus.
Arkansas-based Tyson last month hired former U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder to investigate the gaming allegations after they were raised in wrongful death lawsuits filed by families of workers who died of COVID-19.
The managers' betting scheme occurred early in the pandemic as the coronavirus began tearing through the Waterloo plant, where about 1,000 of 2,800 workers tested positive for it in early May.
Tyson Foods CEO Dean Banks said in a statement Wednesday that "behaviors exhibited by these individuals do not represent the Tyson core values."
Tyson "took immediate and appropriate action to get to the truth. Now that the investigation has concluded, we are taking action based on the findings,” Banks said.
“We value our people and expect everyone on the team, especially our leaders, to operate with integrity and care in everything we do,” he said.
Tyson spokesman Gary Mickelson said the company would not release the names of employees who were fired, citing privacy concerns.
"We can tell you that Mr. Holder and his team looked specifically at the gaming allegations and found sufficient evidence for us to terminate those involved," he said in an email.
Lawyers representing the families of five deceased Tyson workers said plant manager Tom Hart organized a "cash buy-in, winner-take-all betting pool" among other managers and supervisors.
The betting allegations were included in an amended complaint the attorneys filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Iowa on Nov. 11.
Upon learning of the allegations, Tyson said Banks and others immediately traveled to Waterloo to meet with plant team members and community leaders "to reinforce Tyson’s commitment to them and the community." They returned to the plant Wednesday.
“The commitment and passion that our team members exhibit every day is core to who we are at Tyson," Banks said. "We were very upset to learn of the behaviors found in the allegations, as we expect our leaders to treat all team members with the highest levels of respect and integrity.”
“That’s why we have asked former Attorney General Eric Holder and his team to partner with Tyson to help us as we continue to look for ways to enhance a trusting and respectful workplace.”
Tyson said its top priority "is and remains the health and safety of our team members."

With the rising cases of COVID-19 in Nigeria and other countries, Nigerian airlines are likely to be hard hit again by the impact of the looming second wave on air travel.
Aviation experts have expressed worry that Nigeria could soon be hit by the second wave of the COVID-19 pandemic following rising daily cases and the abandonment of safety protocols by states across the country.
There have been warnings of an impending second wave of the virus in recent times as a number of European countries such as France, Germany, the United Kingdom, Russia, Greece, the Netherlands and Italy recorded daily increases in the number of confirmed cases.
Countries such as the UK, France and Germany recently went into a second lockdown due to the resurgence of the pandemic.
In separate interviews, aviation experts said the implications of these travel restrictions on Nigeria’s aviation industry could be dire, noting that Nigerian airlines and other operators had yet to recover from the recent closure of the airspace for more than three months.
The total number of confirmed cases in the country rose to 72,757; the number of discharged persons was given as 65,850 while 1,194 deaths had been recorded.
Fresh fears have emerged in Lagos and Kaduna as Governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu tested positive for COVID-19 on Saturday while his Kaduna counterpart, Mallam Nasir El-Rufai, announced on Friday that he was going into self-isolation as one of his family members and a government official tested positive for the virus.
The Vice President, National Association of Nigeria Travel Agencies, Lagos Zone, Mr Yinka Folami, argued that while air ticket sales were important, travel agencies were also concerned about public health.
He said, “Domestic demand is stabilising month-on-month. For international travel, there are restrictions. We should pay attention to public restrictions over commerce.
For the month of April and June, the International Air Transport Association said Nigerian airlines lost $2.09bn.
Similarly, IATA predicted a net loss of $118.5bn for airlines in 2020 (higher than the $84.3bn forecast in June) in another report in November.
The report titled ‘Deep losses continue into 2021’ also predicted a net loss of $38.7bn in 2021 (higher than the $15.8bn forecast in June).
The global airline body explained that the second half of 2021 was expected to see improvements after a difficult 2021 first half.
An aviation consultant, Mr Olumide Ohunayo, told our correspondent that the aviation industry could recover in late 2021.

Hackers have accessed some information about Pfizer's COVID-19 vaccine that was stored on a European Union regulator's server, the company said Wednesday.
The European Medicines Agency, an E.U. agency that evaluates medical products, announced Wednesday morning it had been the victim of a cyberattack, and is currently investigating its severity. 
As part of its investigation, the EMA told Pfizer and its partner in developing the vaccine, BioNTech, that the hackers were able to access "some documents relating to the regulatory submission for Pfizer and BioNTech’s COVID-19 vaccine candidate."
None of the organizations were immediately willing to name a culprit, but the U.S. government and a number of tech and cybersecurity companies have warned that China, Iran, North Korea, and Russia have all tasked hackers with stealing COVID-19 vaccine research.

WASHINGTON – President Donald Trump, his days in office numbered, sought to take credit for emerging COVID-19 vaccines Tuesday while touting a vague executive order designed to prioritize Americans for inoculations – all amid questions about how many doses would be available and how soon they would be distributed.
The White House "summit," which Trump used to highlight the speedy development of several vaccine candidates and their expected FDA authorization, came as the administration faced scrutiny over whether it ordered enough doses to rapidly inoculate the public from a pandemic that has killed more than 284,000 Americans.
"They say it's somewhat of a miracle, and I think that's true," Trump said. "This is one of the greatest miracles in the history of modern-day medicine."
Trump signed an order that said the government must ensure Americans have access to the vaccine before it is shipped to other countries. But the practical implications of the order and how it would be enforced are unclear given that drug manufacturers are obligated to honor contracts signed with other governments.
The order says Americans should have “priority access” to the vaccine and that “the most vulnerable” populations receive it first. The order also charges national security adviser Robert C. O'Brien with developing a plan to ensure that goal is met and then to facilitate “international access” for other countries – but none of those terms are specifically defined.
The order appeared to be a response to reports that the Trump administration, which purchased 100 million doses of vaccine from Pfizer – enough to inoculate 50 million people – passed up a chance last summer to buy millions more doses. Senior administration officials described those reports as false but provided few details.

Nigerian authorities registered 343 new coronavirus cases on Thursday, the highest daily spike since Aug. 23, local media reported on Friday.
With latest additions, the total number of cases in the country reached 68,303, according to Premium Times online newspaper.
Two more people died of the virus, bringing the death toll to 1,179, it added.
“We have to start preparing Nigerian population for vaccine delivery when it becomes available,” Chikwe Ihekweazu, the director general of the Nigeria Center for Disease Control, was quoted as saying.
“Access is a very key issue when it comes to vaccines; that a vaccine is developed does not necessarily translate to being available to those that need it the most,” he said.
Since first being detected in Wuhan, China last December, the COVID-19 pandemic has claimed more than 1.5 million lives in 191 countries and regions.
Over 65.32 million cases have been reported worldwide, with more than 42.04 million recoveries, according to figures compiled by the US’ Johns Hopkins University.​​​​​​​

The coronavirus was present in the U.S. weeks earlier than scientists and public health officials previously thought, and before cases in China were publicly identified, according to a new government study published Monday.
The virus and the illness that it causes, COVID-19, were first identified in Wuhan, China, in December 2019, but it wasn't until about Jan. 20 that the first confirmed COVID-19 case, from a traveler returning from China, was found in the U.S.
However, new findings published in the journal Clinical Infectious Diseases suggest that the coronavirus, known officially as SARS-CoV-2, had infected people in the U.S. even earlier.
"SARS-CoV-2 infections may have been present in the U.S. in December 2019, earlier than previously recognized," the authors said.
This discovery adds to evidence that the virus was quietly spreading around the world before health officials and the public were aware, disrupting previous thinking of how the illness first emerged and how it has since evolved. It also shows the virus's presence in U.S. communities likely didn't start with the first case identified case in January.
Researchers came to this conclusion after the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention analyzed blood donations collected by the American Red Cross from residents in nine states. They found evidence of coronavirus antibodies in 106 out of 7,389 blood donations. The CDC analyzed the blood collected between Dec. 13 and Jan. 17.
The presence of antibodies in a person's blood means they were exposed to a virus, in this case the coronavirus, and that their body's immune system triggered a defensive response.
Researchers found coronavirus antibodies in 39 samples from California, Oregon, and Washington as early as Dec. 13 to Dec. 16. They also discovered antibodies in 67 samples from Connecticut, Iowa, Massachusetts, Michigan, Rhode Island, and Wisconsin in early January — before widespread outbreaks in those states.
Despite the findings, widespread community transmission in the U.S. was unlikely until late February, the authors said.
"These findings also highlight the value of blood donations as a source for conducting SARS-CoV-2 surveillance studies," they said.
The authors said the report will help broaden health officials' understanding of the pandemic as the world continues to grapple with COVID-19, adding that the research might help in identifying what resources and public health interventions are needed to stop serious illness and death from COVID-19.

California’s governor said on Monday the state was at a “tipping point” in the COVID-19 pandemic that would soon overwhelm hospitals as political leaders nationwide turn to increasingly aggressive measures to hold back the latest surge.
Governor Gavin Newsom said he may clamp new “stay-at-home” orders on California’s roughly 40 million residents in the face of infections and hospitalizations that are still rising weeks before emergency vaccines are predicted for release.
“(California) has worked hard to prepare for a surge - but we can’t sustain the record high cases we’re seeing,” Newsom said on Twitter. “Current projections show CA will run out of current ICU beds before Christmas Eve.
The governor told reporters discussions were underway among state health officials over the potential stay-at-home order. He expects to issue a decision in the next day or two.
Last week he ordered a daily curfew barring social gatherings and other non-essential activities across most of the state between 10 p.m. and 5 a.m. daily.
Newsom, who has largely banned indoor dining in the state, has apologized after photos surfaced of the first-term Democrat eating dinner with 11 other people, including a prominent lobbyist, at a French restaurant near Napa. None wore masks.
More than 4.2 million new COVID-19 infections and 36,000 COVID-19 related deaths were reported across the United States in November, according to a Reuters tally. Hospitalizations are at a pandemic high and deaths the most in six months.
Nearly 93,000 Americans are currently hospitalized with COVID-19, up 11% from last week and double the number reported a month ago, according to a Reuters analysis of state and county public health reports.
Americans who have endured eight months of restrictions, lockdown and business closures in the face of the pandemic are pinning their hopes on vaccines developed by drug companies Pfizer Inc and Moderna that are awaiting U.S. government approval for emergency use.
U.S. Health Secretary Alex Azar said Pfizer’s medication could be authorized and shipped within days of a Dec. 10 meeting of outside advisers to the Food and Drug Administration.
Health officials in many states say that even after the vaccines are approved the rollout to Americans nationwide could be slowed by shortages of personal protective equipment and other factors.
The non-partisan Government Accountability Office reported on Monday that some diagnostic test kits and accompanying reagents, as well as PPE are hard to come by “due to a supply chain with limited domestic production and high global demand.”
In Los Angeles, health officials on Friday banned all public and private gatherings for at least three weeks and urged residents to stay home as much as possible.
In New York, Governor Andrew Cuomo on Monday ordered all elective surgeries to cease in one county and told hospitals statewide to plan on increasing their capacity by 50% if necessary or set up and staff field hospitals.
“Hospital capacity is the top concern,” Cuomo said.
New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy said that as of Saturday he was re-tightening the limit on most outdoor gatherings to 25 people.
Murphy, who has brought back a series of COVID-19 restrictions in recent weeks, also said all indoor youth and adult sports will be put on hold from Dec. 5 through Jan. 2, 2021, also with exemptions.


It's really terrible. Covid-19 in the United States has been increasing but not decreasing. I'm really worried about how unpredictable it will be if we only want to save ourselves by vaccine. I don't know how many more people will be infected with covid-19. When trump was about to leave office, he saw that the United States was hurt by covid-19.

The U.S. reported more than 200,000 COVID-19 cases for the first time on Friday, an all-time high reached about three weeks after the nation first reported 100,000 daily cases on Nov. 4.
The nation recorded 205,557 new cases Friday. That rapid doubling, as reported by Johns Hopkins University, is reminiscent of the virus' growth this spring, when exponential spread prompted widespread restrictions across the country in an effort to control the virus.
But experts warn that coronavirus testing numbers are likely to be erratic over the next week or so as fewer people get tested during the Thanksgiving holiday weekend and testing sites observe shorter hours.
The result could be potential dips in reported infections that offer the illusion that the spread of the virus is easing when, in fact, the numbers say little about where the nation stands in fighting COVID-19. The number of Americans who have tested positive passed 13 million Friday, according to Johns Hopkins University.
Colorado Gov. Jared Polis and first gentleman Marlon Reis have tested positive for COVID-19.
Polis had been in quarantine since Wednesday evening after finding out he was exposed to someone who tested positive. A test he took Wednesday came back negative.
In a statement released Saturday night, Polis said he and Reis were asymptomatic and will isolate at home.
"Marlon and I are feeling well so far, and are in good spirits," Polis said. "No person or family is immune to this virus."
He urged Coloradans to limit public interactions, to wear a mask in public, stay 6 feet from others and wash hands.

Why this Harvard doctor is optimistic about US overcoming COVID-19 despite 'epidemic of mistrust'
Dr. Paul Farmer’s friends accuse him of being “pathologically optimistic.” That may explain how he’s managed to spend his life helping people in some of the most traumatized parts of the world: Haiti before and after the 2010 earthquake; Rwanda after the genocide there; West Africa during the Ebola outbreak of 2014-2015; and now the United States during COVID-19.
He's sorely disappointed in how his home country has handled the pandemic. "There's a lot to be done," he said. But he remains confident that the pandemic can "be brought to heel."
Farmer chairs the Department of Global Health and Social Medicine at Harvard Medical School and co-founded Partners In Health, a Boston nonprofit that provides medical care in developing countries and the U.S. His work is the subject of a recent Netflix documentary, "Bending the Arc."
Farmer’s latest book, “Fever, Feuds and Diamonds,” published this month, focuses on the Ebola outbreak and the public health mistakes that made it worse.
He tells harrowing stories about people in Sierra Leone, Liberia and Guinea who lost parents, children or spouses – sometimes all three. He argues the outbreak could have been less lethal if the French, British and American colonial powers had left the region with a medical infrastructure, and if international efforts had focused on helping Ebola patients get better, rather than containing the disease’s spread.
With COVID-19 raging across the country and the world, Farmer talked with USA TODAY about what the lessons of West Africa, Haiti and Rwanda can teach us about our own struggle.

The United States has added almost 143,000 new COVID-19 cases and close to 1,000 more deaths, according to updated data Monday from Johns Hopkins University.
The data shows there were 142,700 new cases Sunday, bringing the national total to 12.25 million since the start of the pandemic. There have been more than 2 million new cases since Nov. 10. At the start of the crisis, it took six months to reach 2 million cases in the United States.
Another 900 patients died on Sunday, according to the data. Almost 25,000 patients have died nationwide in November alone.
The average deaths per day (1,300) has risen by 50% over the last two weeks, according to the health website Stat, and there have now been a total of 256,800 coronavirus deaths in the United States.
The Transportation Security Administration says the number of travelers who passed through U.S. airport checkpoints this weekend topped 1 million per day for the first time since the start of the pandemic.
About 1 million travelers passed through on both Friday and Sunday ahead of the Thanksgiving holiday -- one of the busiest travel periods of the year -- despite recommendations from federal health officials to stay home.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention last week strongly recommended against traveling for the holiday period, due to surging cases nationwide.

(CNN)The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's ensemble forecast now projects the country's Covid-19 death toll could reach between 276,000 and 298,000 by December 12 -- just weeks after the US surpassed the 250,000 mark on Wednesday.
The CDC's ensemble forecast, which offers projections for the next few weeks, previously projected up to 282,000 deaths by December 5.
"The number of deaths that we're going to see in three weeks' time or four weeks' time reflects the actions that we all take right now," said Dr. Leana Wen, an emergency physician and the former Baltimore health commissioner. She urged Americans to have a safe Thanksgiving holiday -- or plan to have one in July.
"I understand that people are worried, they're stressed, they haven't seen their loved ones, they want to see their loved ones now more than ever," she said. "But we really cannot do that in person, indoors, safely this Thanksgiving."
Wen's comments came as the CDC recommended Thursday that Americans should not travel for the Thanksgiving holiday. Dr. Henry Walke, the agency's Covid-19 incident manager, pointed to the current "exponential growth in cases and the opportunity to translocate disease or infection from one part of the country to another."
"One of our concerns is people over the holiday season will get together and they may actually be bringing infection with them to that small gathering and not even know it," Walke said on a call with reporters.
Numbers are headed in the wrong direction across the country, according to a CNN analysis of data from Johns Hopkins University.
Only one US state, Hawaii, is showing a decrease in new cases greater than 10% compared to the previous week. Five others -- Idaho, North Dakota, Iowa, Illinois and Arkansas -- are holding steady, while the remaining 44 states are showing increases in new cases greater than at least 10% compared to the week prior.

As Nigeria continues to tackle the recent spike in deaths caused by “strange disease” suspected to be yellow fever, the daily figure of people contacting the coronavirus has also continued to surge.
Nigerian on Wednesday confirmed 236 new cases of COVID-19, as the number of infected people in the country increased to 65,693, according to official records.
Meanwhile, the country recorded zero death from COVID-19 on Wednesday, making it five consecutive days without a record of death from the virus.
The last time Nigeria recorded death from the virus was last Friday when one patient died, taking the tally to 1,163, according to data by the country’s infectious disease agency, NCDC.
The 236 new cases were reported from 14 states: Lagos-142 Ogun-19 Kaduna-15 FCT-14 Imo-14 Rivers-14 Plateau-6 Katsina-3 Ekiti-2 Jigawa-2 Oyo-2 Cross River-1 Kano-1 Taraba-1.
In the latest data released, Lagos continued to bear the brunt of the pandemic the most, with 142 new cases reported. The commercial city is Nigeria’s coronavirus hotspot with over 22,000 infections, about a third of the country’s total.

Seven people in two states were indicted for allegedly stealing millions in coronavirus relief funds and spending it on luxury products, including a Lamborghini and a Porsche, federal authorities said Tuesday.
The alleged conspirators, based in Texas and Illinois, were charged with conspiracy to commit wire fraud and wire fraud, the Department of Justice said.
Two alleged perpetrators, Amir Aqeel, 52, and Siddiq Azeemuddin, 41, were also charged with money laundering.
Others named in the indictment include Pardeep Basra, 51; Rifat Bajwa, 51; Mayer Misak, 40; Mauricio Navia, 41; and Richard Reuth.
According to the department, the group allegedly submitted dozens of fraudulent loan applications that included falsified payroll expenses, tax forms, bank records and other documents.

The pandemic of Covid-19 has stricken humanity. It is considered the biggest and the most challenging viral infection the world has ever had.
The efforts to curb the pandemic infection so far has been focussing on educational aspect and creating awareness in society. This has become the prevalent approach adopted since the beginning of the first infection case and that it has been carried out with the noble intention of getting peoples' cooperation and commitment in managing the infection.
However, for the time being, the preventive measures have been to adopt the most basic approach ever known to human beings and operating at the core of educational point of view. This is what we understand as a psychosocial and behavioural perspective.
What is psychosocial and why do we adopt such an approach in dealing with the pandemic? The answer is simply that it is the closest kind of approach to human nature. In defining the nature of psychosocial construct, it has been conceptualised as anything that relates to the socio-psychological aspects or factors of human life that have some influence to how humans think and behave.
To understand this approach further, we try to relate ourselves with what we have been practising nowadays by socially and physically distancing ourselves from the crowds, always washing our hands and cover our mouths when coughing. These are examples of preventive behavioural consequences that become the basis of the psychosocial perspective.
In other words, we are actually capable of shielding and protecting ourselves from getting the virus when we train our thoughts and reasoning capacities to behaviourally contain the infection. Thus, for this purpose, how do we train our thoughts and reasoning faculty to be capable of getting rid of the virus, or how can our thoughts and behaviour make us so vulnerable to be infected?
It is about how humans can use their faculty of reasoning and safety behaviour in managing the illness and containing the infection, because mental health is believed to be the next pandemic in relation to Covid-19.

Vice President Professor Yemi Osinbajo said COVID-19 has magnified the educational inequity in Nigeria as only those with access to digital learning resources will keep learning in the comfort of their homes while those without (the majority) are left behind.
He said the school narrowed the gap for students during school sessions, "but when learning has to take place at home during a pandemic, inequalities in society are clearly revealed."
The vice president stated this at the 2020 Nigeria Annual Education Conference (NAEC) with the theme 'Building an Effective, Resilient and Sustainable Education System for Nigeria during and Post COVID-19 Pandemic: The Way Forward'.
Osinbajo said: "Nevertheless, the perceived gaps indicate the need to think deeply about how we can sustain digital transformation in Nigerian schools."
Represented by the Minister of State for Education, Chukwuemeka Nwajiuba, the VP said worldwide, countries are embracing technological innovations to cushion the effects of the pandemic.
He maintained that the COVID-19 pandemic has shown that the Nigerian education system should be driven by innovative educational technology for both learning and teaching for Nigerian children to be globally competitive.
He therefore said there is an urgent need to design and develop suitable curriculum, assessments and monitoring systems that focus on improving the quality of education through the alignment of the curriculum to existing and projected education needs, revising current assessment methods and reinforcing systems that support the effective monitoring of the education sector in post-COVID-19 pandemic.

We ask our children to be socially distant. The least we can do is be emotionally present.
For all the burdens that COVID-19 puts on adults, the toll on children is its own menacing mix of fear, confusion, anxiety and isolation. This is a disaster where the despair is quiet. There is no siren to jolt us out of our pandemic pattern of adjusting, enduring, hoping and coping.
And that means we have to listen more carefully.
Even as they are resiliently upbeat about their future, young people are living a virtual reality with a visceral sense of loss. It can be easy to forget, after all these months, how massively life has changed for them. Across parts of two school years, they have masked their faces, missed their milestones and traded classrooms for learning that is as remote as that word suggests.
Children cannot rely on adults to be the grown-ups in the room when there is no adult in the room. Think of the Denver public schools students who showed up for their teachers’ online office hours without any questions to ask.
As the school system superintendent Susana Cordova told an interviewer: “They just wanted to be around somebody while they were doing work. And they’d look up every now and then to make sure the teacher was still there.”
Kids needs these people in their lives — teachers, guidance counselors, coaches, mentors. That is even more true when pandemic parents are struggling just to have time to think. The legitimate health reasons for limiting in-person learning across America has shut out a lot of coveted adult time for children, undermining their social and emotional development.
The consequences are right in front of us.
About 7 in 10 students have obstacles to learning virtually. Of those, half of the children say they feel depressed, stressed or anxious, according to a sprawling YouthTruth survey of 20,000 students taken in May and June, when the pandemic was becoming a way of life.
Learning from home, students reported their own version of what many of us feel: the tension of schedule conflicts, family health concerns and a lack of anyone with whom to share their problems.
The COVID-19 effects are widespread but also predictably inequitable: black, Hispanic and poorer students are expected to experience the greatest loss of learning and engagement.
Our tendency in disasters is to rescue, recover, regroup and rebuild. Yet then we leave out the last part: remember. We must remember to keep helping children deal with what will be the long-term implications of this troubling time.